Lest We Forget putting 13 bands back together

Ron Faiola

Die Kreuzen will headline Lest We Forget, a tribute concert to many departed Milwaukee bands.

This Saturday's "Lest We Forget" memorial reunion brings together musicians and fans from the Milwaukee music scene of the late '70s through the '80s and beyond. It originated with a Facebook group - begun by Mike L. Podolak of the band Sacred Order - intended to commemorate the demise of many who had made the scene thrive.

"I was one of the first people in the group, and I'd had an idea for a long time," said Ron Faiola (a co-founder and former member of Couch Flambeau), who is co-producing the show with Podolak. "I had these videos I'd shot over the years of bands, and I wanted to show them. I thought we could get together and have a party to show them, and that kind of mushroomed from there."

In February, Faiola and Podolak started contacting bands, eventually narrowing the list to 13 acts, including Die Kreuzen, whose bassist, Keith Brammer, had followed the Lest We Forget Facebook page with mounting alarm.

"It was horrifying," Brammer said. "The list got longer and longer of all these people who from misadventure or self-medication or disease had passed away. So when Ron said, 'Why don't we do a memorial benefit show for these people?' I wanted to do it."

A lot of other people wanted to do it as well, but there was the question of what to do with the money generated by the show. After some thought, the organizers decided on the Milwaukee branch of the American Liver Foundation.

"Musicians we've known through the ages have had liver issues, and some playing the show do, too," Faiola said. "You're seeing it now on the news where people are walking around with hepatitis C and don't even know it."

"A lot of us have various experiences with that," Brammer added. "It's a pretty appropriate charity. It's funny that people back then would've wanted to know what their cut was. Now they're wondering whom to give the money to."

Brammer's reference to "back then" is a reminder that Die Kreuzen hasn't played a show in 20 years, and much of the technology that musicians and bands use today to connect with one another and the world didn't exist then. "Do it yourself" meant a lot more real work, and that work tended to stay local, relying upon venues (particularly, in Milwaukee, Starship) and word of mouth.

"It was a time before everything got all the same and the influences got spread all over the place," Faiola said. "It was probably the last musical movement that was really original."

Said Brammer: "If you did underground music, it was an 'us and them' thing. If you got a hundred people to see you, it was great, but now it's just been absorbed by the mainstream, and it takes away the sense of discovery that we all had."

The "us" group has again gotten smaller recently with the death of Blackholes leader Mark Shurilla. (The rest of the band will still play a tribute to him.) But Lest We Forget isn't a moment of silence.

"We're not touting this as a funeral, but as a celebration," Brammer said. "These people were and are about making a loud noise, and the whole attitude of the scene that birthed us is still there."

REMEMBER THEM?

The "Lest We Forget" reunion has a lot of music on offer. Here's a summary, in order of appearance:

6 p.m. Liv Mueller: Mueller is a veteran of such fine melodic-rock bands as the Lovelies and the Dark Horse Project.

6:25 p.m. Xposed 4Heads: Led, more or less, by Mark G.E., this lo-fi, experimental and satirical outfit survived from 1982 to '93. There's a legend that they've never played live - until now.

6:45 p.m. Blackholes: With the death of frontman Mark Shurilla this month, the rest of Blackholes - sometimes described as "power-punk polka" - will be paying tribute to him.

7:10 p.m. Rock-A-Dials: In the early and mid-'80s, rockabilly experienced a modest revival nationally with bands like the Stray Cats, and Rock-A-Dials did right by the music hereabouts.

7:35 p.m. 3XCleavers: Formerly known as XCleavers and broadly influenced by the sounds of the early '80s (punk, ska, etc.), this band wanted to get people dancing and opened for up-and-comers like U2 (in 1981, no less). Founding member Terry Tanger died in 2011, so they have become 3XCleavers.

8 p.m. Dominoes: Musicians from several other bands came together in Dominoes to have power-pop fun from roughly 1980 to '83.

8:30 p.m. 3 on Fire: Something of a Dominoes offshoot, this band got plenty tight as a power trio and had a four-year span, then split for reasons that remain unclear all these years later.

9 p.m. Tense Experts: Dyed black hair, pale skin and darkly emotional songs tagged the Tense Experts as "Goth" when the term had more musical than cultural meaning. They broke up in 1983.

9:30 p.m. Sacred Order: Mike Podolak is one of the Lest We Forget co-producers, but he's also got chops thanks to this punk band, through which various Milwaukee greats (including Damian Strigens and Don Nelson) have rotated.

10 p.m. Die Kreuzen: Probably the best-known band on the bill, Die Kreuzen rocked hard-core but, as it developed from 1981 to '92, also incorporated other subgenres and conceptualism. Last year it was inducted into the Wisconsin Area Music Industry Hall of Fame. This reunion lacks member Brian Egeness, busy in Austin but bestowing his blessing nevertheless.

10:50 p.m. Lubricants: Yet another Milwaukee-style punk band, Lubricants came along early enough that many locals considered them an exemplar of the form as a whole.

11:20 p.m. Dummy Club: If "psychobilly" is rockabilly's wilder cousin, then Dummy Club was a female-fronted part of the family that might have given the Cramps some serious competition.

12 a.m. St. Bernard: In 1982, this band had a nifty local hit with "My Baby Went to the Bahamas"; 30 years later, it will close this event by bringing out other musicians on that song's middle eight.